2022 Wyndham Championship – Sedgefield Country Club – Course Preview

In the final PGA Tour event before the start of the FedExCup Playoffs, Sedgefield Country Club will play host to the Wyndham Championship. Located near Greensboro, North Carolina, Sedgefield has been a regular Tour stop since 2008. It is a Donald Ross-designed classical course with a storied history that was built during golf’s “Golden Age”.

The recently updated and preserved Sedgefield course provides a strategic challenge that is rarely found on Tour. It is a course where finding the contoured fairways carries real worth. While scoring has continued to be low over the years, the narrow, tree-lined fairways along with strategic routing and bunkering, and elevated tricky green complexes ensure that Sedgefield will continue to be a fair test of golf.

Similar to last week at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, this shorter course does feature an above-average number of wedges with the goal of getting the ball as close to the hole on approach. Dissimilar to last week, however, bombers off the tee do not have that much of an advantage, and many of them do not even bother to show up for this event.

With many of the world’s best choosing to rest up and prepare for the three-week FedExCup Playoffs on their own, we will see another field of mostly mid- to lower-tier players. Those that are not firmly inside the top 125 will be highly motivated this week. And those who are firmly in next week’s FedEx St. Jude field will be fighting for position.

Will Zalatoris and Billy Horschel are the only top-20 players in the Official World Golf Rankings in the field. Other notable names include Shane Lowry, Corey Conners, Sungjae Im, Tyrrell Hatton, and Russell Henley. With 156 golfers playing this week, the field will be cut to the top 65 and ties after Friday’s round.

Course History

Designed and built by legendary architect Donald Ross on a former hunting estate in 1925, Sedgefield Country Club has quite the storied past. Ross was initially supposed to design two 18-hole layouts but the Great Depression prevented the second course from being built. Before it became the Wyndham Championship in 2008, it was formerly called the Greater Greensboro Chrysler Classic and also the Greater Greensboro Open.

Between 1938 and 1965, Sam Snead won this event a record eight times. Along with hosting the first professional event in North Carolina, the club also helped to break down racial barriers by inviting Charlie Sifford to participate in 1961 before the Tour had removed its segregation clause.

As time passed, the course had been altered and changed so much that it had little resemblance to the original design. The fairways and bunkers, specifically did not make strategic sense. The course underwent a $3 million restoration project by Kris Spence in 2007. The goal was to rebuild the course and also restore the original Ross feel. Sedgefield was closed for 10 months as Spence relied on 80-year-old aerial pictures and original blueprints. Among the main renovations were adding 400 yards in length, re-positioning bunkers, and restoring the greens to their original size. Spence also took out the Bentgrass greens and added Champion Bermuda.

The Course

Sedgefield Country Club is classified as a positional track that is slightly shorter than the average Tour course. It is a par-70 that measures out to 7,131 yards. With fairways that are heavily tree-lined, the course is routed over a rolling, wooded landscape. Just southeast of the center of Greensboro, it has a definite Carolina feel.